Pogo Rogue Deck List Guide (The Boomsday Project October 2018)

This guide contains detailed strategy, mulligan, and deck-building
information to help you improve your Pogo Rogue play for The Boomsday Project
meta.

Pogo Rogue is a new breed of Rogue deck from The Boomsday Project
Expansion. If focuses on repeatedly playing copies of the Pogo-Hopper
card which gain strength for every copy of the card played earlier in the game.
It is reminiscent of Jade Golem mechanic from the Mean Streets of Gadgetzan
expansion and can become almost unstoppable if the game lasts for long
enough.

As the expansion has progressed, Pogo Rogue has proven far too slow to be
able to perform consistently at a high level. However, it is still an
incredibly fun deck that has the potential to win games at all levels.

2. Pogo Rogue Mana Curve

3. Pogo Rogue Mulligan Guide

As Pogo Rogue revolves around playing one specific card, Pogo-Hopper,
your the mulligan strategy for the deck is aimed around playing and utilising
Pogo Hopper as soon as possible.

In your opening hand you should hard mulligan for a copy of
Pogo-Hopper in your opening hand. If you already have a copy available,
you can additionally look for cards to combo with it like Shadowstep,
Cheat Death, and Lab Recruiter.

Against Aggro decks that play a lot of tokens, you can additionally keep a
copy of Fan of Knives or Backstab in your opening hand.

4. Pogo Rogue Strategy

In the early game your primary aim should be to begin your
Pogo-Hopper combo as soon as possible. This will usually involve playing
Cheat Death or a Pogo Hopper immediately followed by Shadowstep.
As there are only two initial copies of Pogo Hopper in the deck, under no
circumstances should you play it in the early game without a way to duplicate
it. As a followup to the aforementioned plays, you are free to play Pogo
Hoppers with Cheat Death in play, or when it can be immediately paired with a
Lab Recruiter.

Going into the mid game, if you are unfortunate enough to have not drawn
into one of your Pogo-Hoppers early, you can begin drawing through your
deck to search for a copy. The most efficient way to do this is with
Witchwood Piper as there is only 1 other 2-Mana minion in the deck, it
is quite likely to draw you a copy of Pogo Hopper. Failing that you should aim
to draw cards with Elven Minstrel, Fan of Knives, and
Preparation and Sprint.

Once you have your Pogo Hopper online in the mid game, your focus should be
on buffing it up for the future. You should prioritise using as many
Lab Recruiters on Pogo Hoppers as possible and even using
Shadowstep on your Lab Recruiters to get multiple Battlecry activations
in a turn. Filling your deck with Pogo Hoppers like this will put you in a
strong position going into the late game.

Sonya Shadowdancer fills a flexible role in the deck. With so many
minions in the deck with powerful Battlecries, you should use her to duplicate
as many targets as possible, especially Pogo-Hoppers. If you manage to
copy a powerful minion such as Lab Recruiter or Vilespine Slayer
then you can additionally consider killing off the generated tokens a second
time using Backstab if Sonya is still in play to utilise their
Battlecries multiple times in a single turn.

If you start to get overwhelmed by your opponent in the mid game, you should
not hesitate to use Vanish. Even if you have your own minions in play,
their powerful Battlecries remove nearly all of the drawback of bouncing them
back to your hand, especially Pogo-Hoppers.

When you reach the late game, your Pogo-Hoppers should begin
to get very powerful and you will have shuffled many additional copies into
your deck. In this position, most opponents will begin to ignore your minions
and try to rush you down and as a Rogue with no healing, this can be
problematic. To counter this, the deck runs both Evasion and
Valeera the Hollow that can stall the game for a turn while your Pogo
Hoppers go to work, which should be enough to win you the game in most
cases.

5. Pogo Rogue Card Swaps

As a relatively new deck, Pogo Rogue has plenty of room card swaps.

Cheat Death and Evasion are fairly interchangeable Secrets
and switching between the two will keep opponents on their toes.

The changes to the deck do have a small effect on the consistency of the
deck. The lack of Sonya Shadowdancer prevents combos allowing you to
bounce and play multiple copies of minions like Lab Recruiter in a
single turn, while no Valeera the Hollow hurts your late-game
survivability a bit. As a replacement, copies of Eviscerate and
Cheat Death are added to strengthen the deck's early game and remove the
dependency on the powerful Legendary tools.

7. Wild Pogo Rogue Deck

As Pogo Rogue is a brand new deck in The Boomsday Project expansion, there
is currently no Wild deck list available. However, keep an eye on this space
for future updates and Wild variants of the deck.

This guide is presented to you by Kat, a professional Hearthstone player
competing at the highest level since closed beta. She is a consistent legend
player in both Wild and Standard with multiple high-rank finishes.